


Take Care

by ssrhpurgatory



Series: Pre-canon ficlets and snippets [6]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: 90s at Goddard Nonsense, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Not really a relationship, Pneumonia, but not really not one either
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:54:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28344228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Hilbert's* lab manager is ill. He doesn't cope well with it. (Neither does she.)*terrible 90s alias Karl Kelley
Relationships: Alexander Hilbert & Original Female Character, Alexander Hilbert/Original Female Character
Series: Pre-canon ficlets and snippets [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2047574
Kudos: 3





	Take Care

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [No Going Back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19979005) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory). 



There was a knock on the frame of the door between Karl’s lab and his office, and he glanced up, grateful for the distraction. Or at least, grateful until he realized it was his lab manager, who he had been avoiding ever since she had yelled at him during their Monday morning check-in about the seven different overdue reports he owed her.

“Rosemary. Ah.”

“Oh, don’t look so worried. I just came in here to talk about the...” Rosemary trailed off, frowning. “Damn. I can’t remember. Seemed awfully important when I left my office, though.” Her voice had a distinct wheeze to it as she spoke, a concerning sound. Had she sounded like that on Monday?

“You sound awful.” She looked awful too, or at least awful for her; her brightly colored ascot of the day was askew, and she had dark circles under her eyes and a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead. “Are you unwell?”

“Just a little chest cold I can’t quite seem to shake.” She coughed, turning her head towards her shoulder.

Karl frowned at the sound of that cough. Worse than the wheezing. “You have been to see your doctor?”

Rosemary rolled her eyes. “End of last week. He told me to take some Nyquil and then lose 90 pounds.”

That did not sound at all promising. “Should you not be resting if you are ill?”

“Oh, probably,” she wheezed nonchalantly. “Unfortunately, _some_ of us have end of quarter reports due next week and don’t have time to.” She sighed and glanced down at her watch. “Speaking of which, I should get back to it. Make sure your lab phone is on the hook, all right? I’ll call up here if I remember what I needed.”

“Wait just a moment,” Karl said, opening the top drawer of his desk and digging through it. That wheeze really was worrying him, and somewhere in here he had...

“You keep a stethoscope in your desk drawer?” Rosemary asked, clearly incredulous.

“Yes.” He sprang to his feet and gestured at his chair. “Sit a moment. I want to listen to your lungs.”

“I’m fine, I promise,” Rosemary said, but that was the only token of resistance that she put up before lowering herself carefully into the chair.

That worried him more than the wheeze, to be honest. If Rosemary was exhausted enough to give in without a fight, she must be worse off than she looked. “Could you take jacket off? Will make this easier.”

“Want me to go get an examination gown? I’m _sure_ I could rustle one up somewhere,” she said with a dangerous quirk to one eyebrow.

Karl felt that her sarcasm was unwarranted, but at least it was a sign that she had some fight left in her. “That will not be necessary. Removal of jacket will be sufficient.”

She let out a wheezy sigh and undid the buttons. Karl helped her tug the sleeves off when the jacket got caught at an awkward angle on her shoulders as she tried to shrug out of it, and hung it over the back of the chair for safe-keeping.

“Want me to unbutton the shirt, too?”

“Er.” He knew exactly what vast expanse of cleavage lay beneath that staid button-up, and also exactly how distracting he found it. “No, this will be sufficient. Could you lean forward?”

She nodded and did so, resting her forearms on his desk and, after a moment of hesitation, lowering her cheek to rest on her arms, her movements slow and careful, as if it hurt.

He pressed the stethoscope to her back. “Take some deep breaths for me?”

She did. There was a distinct wheezing sound to each breath, and a hint of a crackle beneath that might indicate something worse than a cold. She coughed into her elbow as he listened to her lungs, no doubt in reaction to the deep breaths he had asked her to take, a terrible wrenching cough that shook her entire body.

“Easy. Easy.” Almost by instinct he rubbed her back in gentle circles, trying to soothe her. “You can breathe normally now.”

“Thanks,” she said, taking a shallow, rasping breath. She didn’t lift her head from his desk right away, so Karl kept up the small circles as she caught her breath once more.

She tilted her head to one side to look up at him, a weak little smile turning the corners of her mouth up. “So what’s the prognosis, doc?”

“Chest congestion, perhaps initial signs of pneumonia. You need bed rest and lots of fluids.”

She let out a weak laugh that turned into another hacking cough. “Like I said, not happening any time soon. What else can you do for me?”

Karl frowned. “Rosemary...”

“Hey, technically I’m your boss. You don’t get to order me around here.”

He sighed. “Could perhaps compound decongestant with mild stimulant to keep you going for the rest of today, but...”

“Give me enough to get through the Christmas party on Saturday and I’ll forget about those seven reports you owe me until after the holidays.”

A tempting proposition. “Fine. But you will not take it after three in the afternoon, and you will get in to see a different doctor as soon as possible. Oh, and you will go to bed at a reasonable hour for rest of week.”

She glared suspiciously up at him. “How are we defining reasonable hour here?”

“Nine.”

She sat up straight and almost immediately swayed, as if off-balance. “Absolutely not,” she protested, her voice rasping hard in her throat. “I’m going to be in the lab complex until eleven at least.”

“I will consider giving you until ten tonight if you lay down on cot and rest for a while as I compound treatment,” Karl said, pointing at the folding cot in the corner of the room that he used when on observation cycles that had an overnight component.

“I... I really don’t have time for this,” she said. But she was looking at the cot almost longingly.

“Fifteen minutes. Perhaps twenty. I will call down and let your assistant know where you are,” he said soothingly, doing his best to persuade her of the lie that it would take such a short time.

“Oh, all right.”

He prepared the cot for her and made certain she was settled in it before heading out into his lab. His first stop was the phone next to the door and a call down to Rosemary’s assistant Charles.

“You mean you actually got her to lay down and take a break?” Charles said, sounding incredulous. “Thank god. See if you can keep her that way. She’s been going full-tilt for weeks and that cough’s been getting worse.”

Karl took mental note of that piece of data as he moved on to compounding the medication. Simple enough, really. He already had supplies of human-safe decongestants for medicating the current batch of lab rats. Add an expectorant, go down the hall and borrow some caffeine powder from Dr. Solomon, and he had something that would probably keep Rosemary on her feet for the next four days... though he was tempted to add a sedative instead of the stimulant. Sleep would do her far more good than any medication. And Dr. Solomon had seemed to think so as well; she offered a mild sedative up without prompting.

In the end, he made two batches, one for days and one for nights, and would have to hope that Rosemary used them as directed.

When he returned to his office to check on her, she was curled up on her side and snoring softly, and for all that he was loath to wake her, he feared her wrath should he not even more. He shook her gently by the shoulder. “Rosemary?”

She woke up with an undignified little snort. “Oh, god, I’ve drooled all over your pillow,” she said, sounding appalled.

“I do not mind.” He offered her his hand and helped her pull herself upright, frowning when she swayed a little. “You could hide in here a little longer, if you wish.”

She checked her watch and shook her head. “No, I’ve wasted too much time on this already.”

“Well. Here is the requested medication.” He handed her a carefully measured dose in a test tube, and a glass of water to wash it down.

“Thank you.” She swallowed the medication down and made a face. “God, that’s bitter.”

“You wanted quickly assembled and effective, not palatable,” he said drily. “Drink the water. Should help.”

She made another face, but followed his instructions. “Swallowing hurts.”

“Try warm liquids. I am certain Charles would make you tea if you requested it.”

“And then I forget about it until it’s stone cold,” she said with a regretful sigh. “He doesn’t ever yell at me for it, but I wish he would. It would be so much better than his _disappointed_ face.”

“Well, try to remember to drink it.” He handed her two bottles. “One for days, one for nights. Take only as directed. Promise?”

Rosemary rolled her eyes, but took the bottles. “Promise. Fusspot.”

“And I will be checking in on you,” he insisted. “If you have not left the lab building before I have, I will drag you back to apartments by brute force, if need be.”

She eyed him dubiously. “I’d like to see you drag me anywhere I don’t want to go.”

“Rosemary,” he scolded.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me,” she rasped, glaring up at him. “I know my limits. And you should know yours.”

Karl flinched, feeling those words as the scold she had meant them as, and could not bring himself to say another word as she hauled herself the rest of the way to her feet and left his lab.

Of course, neither did she.

One way or another, Rosemary managed to avoid him for the rest of the week. Karl simply had to hope that she was taking the medications as directed and sticking to the early bedtimes he had commanded. His next sight of her was at the Goddard Futuristics Staff Christmas Party, a mandatory event he always did his best to slip out of early and at which he found himself lingering, just to keep an eye on her.

If she were not feeling better, she was at least putting on a good show of it. She liked to wear truly spectacular evening dresses to these events, ones that were cut low in the bust and slit high in the thigh, and tonight’s was no exception. And her mood always matched the dress: impossibly cheerful and festive, always the light and life of the party.

She _sparkled_ , and it wasn’t just the dress.

Still he kept an eye on her, even as he did not dare approach her without being summoned to her side. There was no sign of the exhausted Rosemary who had fallen asleep in his office earlier that week, but that did not mean that she was not there; Rosemary had always been very good at putting forth an impression of false cheer, even when she did not feel it.

He did not know why he started moving in her direction, whether it was a sway to her step or eyes that fell shut for a moment too long. All he did know was that he managed to reach her side just in time to catch her as she fainted, sagging under her weight, noting the harsh crackle to each labored breath she took with more than a little fear.

“I’ve got her, doctor.” The massive arms of Al Bennett, the ostensible head of security at Goddard, came around Rosemary’s body and relieved Karl of her. “I’ll get her back to her apartment.”

“She needs to go to hospital,” Karl insisted, still frightened by the harsh sound of her breathing.

Al nodded and started towards the door. “Then I’ll take her to the medical building. There are always a few folks on call for emergencies.”

“I’m coming with you,” Karl insisted, dogging Al’s footsteps.

Al shot him a warning look. “You should stay here.”

“I gave her medication. Doctor will need to know what she was taking.”

This got him another sharp look from Al, but the man let Karl accompany him to the medical wing all the same. When the doctor on call was not moving quickly enough to Karl’s eyes, however, Al removed Karl bodily from the treatment room Rosemary was in and dragged him down the hall to the nurse’s lounge, settling Karl into one of the well-padded chairs there and himself into the one next to it.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Al asked casually, leaning back in his chair and resting his hands on his chest.

Karl frowned, his mind still on Rosemary. “Talk about what?”

“About whatever had you watching our Miss Rosie so carefully that you were halfway across the room before she started to fall.”

“I was just—“ he began indignantly.

Al cut him off before he could get any further. “About whatever had you too frantic to think sensibly while we were on our way over here,” the man said, calm as ever but very _intent_ somehow, as if, in spite of his apparent calm, he was running some sort of interrogation. “About whatever had you almost shoving that doctor aside in there when you thought he wasn’t going about his work fast enough.”

“He was not,” Karl grumbled. “You should have let me take over.”

“Oh, I think you’ve shown far too much of your hand already tonight, doctor,” Al said companionably. “Leave it to the folks whose job it is to deal with that sort of thing.”

Karl let out a frustrated sigh. “I _am_ a medical doctor, you know.”

“And if I hadn’t dragged you out of there, it’d be all over the company tomorrow that you and Rosie are an item. Not that there won’t be, the way you caught her.”

Karl whipped his head around to glare at Al, appalled. “What? Just because I—but I have never—I _would_ never—she is my lab manager!”

Al listened to this disjointed monologue with a tolerantly amused expression on his face. “And if she weren’t?”

Karl took a deep breath, planning to voice another protest... and then he stopped and let it out on a sigh. What might he do, if he did not work so closely with Rosemary? If he only knew her outside of this place, if he could... but that would change nothing. “My work comes first,” he said quietly, turning his gaze to the wall opposite, not wanting to see Al’s reaction. “Even if it were... appropriate. My work would always come first.”

Al let out a dissatisfied grunt. “Pity.”

Karl whipped his head around to glare at the man again. “Why pity? You and she are... are you not?” He had seen Al coming out of Rosemary’s apartment more than a few times over the years he had worked at Goddard Futuristics, and had overheard things he could not un-hear through the thin wall between their bedrooms. If anyone were a so-called item with Rosemary, it was Al.

“Nah. Rosie’s not interested in settlin’ down with a layabout like me, and I’m not the settlin’ down type anyway,” Al drawled, his southern accent coming through very strong. “We have a bit of fun together every once in a while and then go our separate ways.”

“I do not think she is the settling type either.” Karl regretted putting a voice to those words almost as soon as they were out of his mouth, but Al’s face stayed locked in that same bland expression, what almost looked like a complete indifference in their current topic of conversation.

“I suppose she’s like you,” Al said, his words measured. “Work always comes first with that woman.”

“Mm.”

They lapsed into silence, waiting. Some twenty minutes later, one of the nurses on duty came in to inform them that Rosemary would be fine, but she would need to stay overnight in the medical building, and they would re-evaluate her condition in the morning.

“Could I stay with her?” Karl asked before Al could chide him for it.

The nurse nodded. “There’s a chair in her room.”

“Hope it’s worth it to you, doctor,” Al said after the nurse left, an oblique warning.

“She is my friend.”

“Sure, doc.”

The room was quiet and dark, the beep of the heart monitor and pulse oximeter that were hooked up to Rosemary soothing. Karl meant to keep a watch on her, but he found himself dozing off time and again, only to jerk away with anxiety each time. He had taken the time to read the chart at the end of her bed, and he knew exactly how close a call this had been—and how close a call it could still become, if Rosemary continued to behave as if she were indestructible.

Perhaps Al was right to scold him for his attachment. Karl had been warned by Viktor Stukov when he had joined Goddard Futuristics that any attachments he might form here could and would be used against him by management, and so he had shied away from such things. But Rosemary…

“Where am I?” Rosemary’s voice mumbled, waking Karl up from his half-doze once again.

“Hospital,” he grunted in reply.

She mumbled something almost inaudible that he thought might be “But I don’t have time for that.”

“You will _make_ time,” he snapped.

“Just a cold.”

“No, it _was_ a cold. Now, it is severe pneumonia, because you did not rest, did not go to doctor to get proper treatment.”

“You were treating me.” The last word turned into a cough, which turned into a whole series of coughs, which turned into a deep, wheezing attempt on Rosemary’s part to catch her breath once more.

“I was helping you manage symptoms. That was not treatment.” A low fury pooled in his stomach. “Rosemary, you collapsed. You could have hurt yourself from that alone. And the damage you have done to your lungs by ignoring this ailment...”

“It can’t have been that serious,” she rasped. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

“Only because you are lucky. You almost were not.”

“Well, that would have been fine too.”

The thought of Goddard Futuristics without Rosemary wiped away the heat of his fury, replacing it with a chill of terror. “What would I—would we do without you?”

“Janet would step up, I’d imagine.” She paused for a painful-sounding breath. “Or there are a couple of young fellows in some of the satellite labs who are showing a lot of promise.”

“They are not you.”

“Who is?” she asked flippantly in response.

“Rosemary. Please.” Karl felt his voice choke in his throat, felt the hot prick of tears at the corners of his eyes. He gave in to the urge to take her hand in his, holding it carefully to avoid jostling the IV. “You must take care of yourself.”

She stared at him with a little frown between her eyebrows. “You offering to help?”

He let out a startled breath, but could find no answer. First Al, now her. Was he really so obvious?

“What I thought.” She shut her eyes, removed her hand from his grasp. “I’m going to go back to sleep. You should go do the same.”

“Very well.” Karl got stiffly to his feet, feeling as if he had somehow made a terrible mistake. Could he have offered to take care of her? Would she have accepted it? Hypotheticals that now bore a pressing weight, for all that he had dismissed them flippantly when Al had brought up Karl’s attachment to her. But instead of examining those thoughts out loud, he turned his back on her and went to the door, desperate to escape them.

“Dmitri?”

He flinched at her use of his birth name, but he still paused, his hand on the doorknob. “Yes?”

“Don’t dictate to me. It’s my life. I’ll live it how I see fit.”

Karl let out a ragged breath. Why not ask it? Just in case. “And if I did want to help? To be part of your life?”

There was a wheezing, derisive laugh from Rosemary. “We both know that will never happen.”

Karl shut his eyes, feeling her response like a stab to his chest. What had he expected? “Sleep well, Rosemary. Rest for as long as you are able.”

And with luck, when she woke again, she would forget that he had ever said such at thing.

If only he could forget so easily himself.


End file.
